Chapter Nineteen. Riding a Bike （Except There Are Knives on Your Feet and You Also Aren’t on a Bike）
Chapter Nineteen
Riding a Bike (Except There Are Knives on Your Feet and You Also Aren’t on a Bike)
“ We filmed at boring-ass places— —DC. Let’s do something fun!” Calum pleads. “Pizza by the slice!”
“
“The theme of the music video— —iconic locations. We can get pizza anywhere.” Mateo sighs.
“Italian ice? Street-corner hot dogs?”
“Wow, yeah— —really sold me with street-corner hot dogs,” Mateo grumbles.
A headache thwacks my skull in steady beats, like my brain is a bird repeatedly flying into a window. I massage my temples from a couch in the hotel lobby. The meet and greet ended forty minutes ago, and for thirty-six of those minutes, the boys have been bickering about music video ideas.
Felix occupies an armchair across from me. He mimes choking Calum, one eye forcibly twitching. I snort.
I tune back in to the argument as Lachlan says in his assertive Dad Friend voice, “One way or another, we need— —choose before Andrew picks for us.” Necktie is pacing at the far end of the lobby while on the phone. How many calls does this guy make every day?
“I vote Statue of Liberty— —Empire State Building,” Mateo says.
“Boooo!” Calum calls.
“I’m with Mateo,” Will declares.
“BOO!”
“Er, sorry for worsening— —problem, but I’d like to go— — Rockefeller Center,” Felix interjects. “The Empire State Building is just a big building. We have those back home.”
“And— —Statue of Liberty?” Mateo raises a brow.
“I’m from New Zealand. It’s not my liberty.”
“If you use that excuse one more ti—” He’s cut off by Lachlan elbowing him.
Before the group-wide argument resumes, I chime in with, “Why don’t you split up? That way everyone can do what they want.”
Everyone’s eyes land on me, unblinking.
“Oh,” Lachlan mumbles.
When I step out of a yellow cab in Rockefeller Center, I do a full turn, taking it all in. “Now this,” Felix says beside me, “is gonna be so much more fun.”
“And we even have statues and buildings of our own,” I mutter, jerking my head toward the huge gold statue looming gloriously above an ice rink nestled between high-rises. “So what’s the plan?” I ask.
He puts his BURBERRY trench coat on over the white-and-pink RAISE BOYS AND GIRLS THE SAME WAY T-shirt he’s wearing, and I shoot him a bewildered look because it’s eighty degrees out. “We’re gonna ice-skate!” he explains gleefully.
I pointedly look at Ginger. “Pretty sure the ADA doesn’t cover dogs on ice.”
“Could— —watch her for a sec?” he asks Sunglasses. She hesitates before curtly nodding. “If that’s alright with you, Nat.”
I’m not thrilled about leaving my service dog with someone else, but I guess Sunglasses is a safe choice given her entire career is protecting people.
After working our way through the crowd, Felix pays for two tickets, and we’re handed skates. As he goes to put his wallet back in his fanny pack, a blue Post-it note falls out and is whisked away by the breeze before he can grab it.
“I hope— —wasn’t too important,” he says to himself.
We make our way to a bench; people stare and point at him, some kids wave from inside the rink. He politely waves back. After lacing our skates, he turns to me. “Can you help film?” I bob an affirmative fist.
I reluctantly hand Sunglasses Ginger’s leash, and Ginger gives me a confused look. I plant a kiss on her head before Sunglasses positions herself by the rink’s entrance, scanning the crowd. She gives us a thumbs-up.
I make my way onto the ice. The cold rink is a welcome change from the oppressive summer heat.
It’s been years since I went ice-skating, but it comes back to me immediately.
Skating was another tradition for Dad and me.
We’d go every Christmas Eve, just us, ever since Jo broke her arm when she was seven and never went near a rink again.
A bittersweet haze clouds the memory, and I force a breath of chilly air into my lungs, grounding myself in the present moment.
“What shots—” I start, but when I turn around, Felix isn’t behind me. He’s still on the bench. “You OK?” I sign.
He nods uncertainly. When he gets up, I skate farther back, then press Record.
Unfortunately, my plan for a perfect video of him stepping into the rink is ruined the nanosecond his first skate touches the ice.
His long leg slips far in front of him, forcing him into the splits, one leg on ice and the other still outside the rink.
The howling laugh that escapes me is uncontrollable. “It’s not funny!” he exclaims, trying to hoist himself up.
“No, Felix, it’s so funny. Sweet Jesus.” I keep the camera on him as his face turns tomato red, but I skillfully pull out my phone and snap a few pictures for my archive.
When he finally manages to get both blades on the ice, he stays frozen in place, his knees bent and arms extended in front of him for balance. I skate backward to fit his whole body in the frame, still laughing.
“Stop filming me!”
“You asked me to film you!”
He shoots me a dirty look. I take pity on him and stop recording. “Do you not know how to ice-skate?” I ask, gliding over to him. He swallows thickly. I fight more laughter. “Then why did you want to come here?”
“I dunno!” he cries. The tips of his ears burn red. “I thought it’d be easy! Like riding a bike!”
“Oh, right, because skates and bikes are super interchangeable.” I tuck the GoPro under my arm and take one of his hands. “Come on, I’ll help you.”
He grips the edge for extra stability as we move forward at a snail’s pace. From outside the rink, Sunglasses trails us, her gaze constantly flicking between us and the cluster of onlookers, some snapping pictures, others whispering behind their hands.
I force it out of my head and teach Felix how to distribute his weight and use the backs of the blade to slow down. But the longer we spend on the ice, the more goose bumps pebble across my skin. After ten minutes, I start shivering.
Felix carefully stops. While in his hilarious half-squat stability pose, he takes off his trench coat and holds it out to me. Normally, I wouldn’t be caught dead in this fugly thing, but warmth is the more pressing matter currently, so he helps me slip it on.
“You look cute,” he muses, then looks to the GoPro and nods. I press Record.
Felix glances at his feet every few seconds and grips the edge so tightly his knuckles whiten. The cherry on top is his uneasy expression, betraying how much he’s not enjoying this.
“Look alive, man!” I call out, then snap my mouth shut when I realize how much like Necktie that sounded.
Felix one-handedly signs, “Then give me something to smile about.” His movements are oddly smooth given the circumstances.
My mind draws a blank. Making people smile on command isn’t exactly an area of my expertise. But, almost like a prophetic vision, I suddenly remember some of my dad’s favorite (and god-awful) jokes.
I double-check the angle on the GoPro before asking, “Have you heard the joke about the deaf guy?”
Felix closes his pointer, middle finger, and thumb together, “No.”
“Neither has he.”
He stares at me blankly, head cocked in confusion, before understanding dawns. The corners of his mouth curve upward, eyes twinkling in the sunlight. “That was bad.”
“I’m only getting started, Pretty Boy.” I smirk. “How do you speak sign language?”
“How?”
“You don’t.”
A laugh finally escapes, his shoulders shake, and his eyes crinkle at the corners. The jokes may be bad, but they’re doing the trick. He hasn’t looked at his feet once, and his expression is all confidence and glee.
I slow down and skate beside him to get a different angle. As I get closer, his mood lifts further. “What happened to the deaf woman who didn’t show up for her court case?” I ask.
“I dunno. What?”
“She lost her hearing.”
That earns me another cheery laugh. I mirror his grin, holding his gaze. With his attention locked on mine, it’s as if the hundreds of people around us blur into the background—like someone pressed Pause on everything except us.
Gradually, his DAYDREAM mask slips, leaving something real and unguarded. One of those looks I find myself chasing after, despite my better judgment. Coldness radiating from the ice can’t combat the butterflies thundering their wings in my gut or the warm blush I feel spreading across my cheeks.
“Oh my god, Felix!” someone squeals. Jarringly, the world around us resumes. “I’m— —biggest fan! Literally, like, if you died, I would, too. Life— —have no meaning,” they continue. “Can I get a picture? Please?!” They smooth their gingham dress and tuck long auburn hair behind their ears.
“Er, nah, yeah,” he stammers, a little dazed, as he and the fan step off the ice. I make my way to Sunglasses and reclaim Ginger.
I’ve barely grabbed her leash when the fan shoves their phone at me. They immediately cozy up to Felix—getting much closer than I’d expect a total stranger to get to someone, famous or not, but Felix keeps his hands firmly clasped in front of him.
By the time the fan leaves, a dozen others have lined up, clamoring for photos or shouting declarations of love. He graciously takes selfies and thanks people for their support, then he looks to Sunglasses for backup. She shoos people away as we take off our skates.
“I’m sorry. We should go back to the hotel.”
“That’s fine. But are you OK?” I ask, concerned. He forces a nod, worrying his lip. I don’t believe him one bit, but now’s not the time.
However, “going back to the hotel” is easier said than done, because after we return the skates, Felix is swarmed again. Sunglasses keeps people under control as he scrawls his signature on random receipts, arms, and phone cases.